The Outcasts of Heaven Belt

Lansing 04 and Ranger (Demarchy space) + 1.73 megaseconds

Wadie watched the starship grow on the screen in the cramped, stinking cabin of the Lansing 04. His admiration grew with it—and his heartfelt gratitude. This was the Ship from Outside, a ship to cross interstellar space at interstellar speeds, with a body streamlined to silken grace as a protection against the corroding particulate wind. It had none of the ugly angularity of the spacecraft he had always seen; it was pragmatic perfection, and there hadn’t been a ship like it in the Heaven system in generations. The prewar starships of the Heaven Belt had been converted into the deadliest of warships during the war—and had been destroyed, every one, just as the access to the basic requirements for life, the delicate balance of survival, had been destroyed. In the end the Main Belt had become a vast mausoleum, and now the isolated survivors were disappearing, like patches of melting snow…

He looked down at the back of Shadow Jack’s head. His own head ached insufferably. He looked back at the screen again, counting the seconds until they reached the ship. Even if it hadn’t been all he imagined, still it would have been a haven, an escape from the past two hundred kilosecs of suffocating indignity in the foulness of this scrap-metal coffin. And an escape from the sullen, hostile boy and the small, blunt woman who might as well have been a man, like all the other women who pushed their way out into space. He watched her as she soothed the cat above the humming control board, the rings shining on her hands. He looked down at the silver-and-ruby ring on his own thumb, the gift of that other spacing woman and her man, and wondered wearily why this one bothered to wear so many rings, when she obviously wasn’t interested in her appearance.

The starship’s image blotted out the stars; unobtrusively, he used his water ration to clean his face and hands.

Not a ship. Wadie pulled back, halfway through the Ranger’s lock, as the room opened before him. This is a world.

“This is the control room.” The captain moved past him, her voice husky in her hoarse throat; he heard the clanking as Shadow Jack still fumbled with a pressure suit in the lock behind him. He drew a long breath of cool air, coughed once as his startled lungs reacted.

“Hello, Pappy.”

The captain pushed off from the wall, with the indefinable lack of grace that marked her alienness more than her face and hair. She moved across the vastness of the control room toward the instrument panels. He suddenly realized that the room was not empty, that he was being studied by a girl and a short pale-skinned man. “Betha—” A smile spread in the man’s grizzled beard—an old man, too old to still be in space, to still be sound… The slim brown girl wasn’t looking at him at all, but only staring through him toward the lock. She was a Belter, ludicrously dressed in faded pants cinched by a flapping belt.

“You mean to tell me this is all you brought back?”

The old man gestured at him, half joking, half appalled. “This-fop? You traded our Rusty for this?”

The captain shook her head, amused, said blithely, “No, not ‘Shadow Jack and the Beanstalk,’ Pappy. I just said we didn’t get the golden goose… and maybe we’ve been the golden goose, all along, and didn’t know it.”

Wadie felt Shadow Jack brush by him with the cat in his arms. The boy tossed her out into the air, giving her momentum, and she paddled on across the room, perfectly at ease.

“Rusty!”

She made rusty meows of pleasure, moving toward the old man’s familiar hands.

The Belter girl’s face startled him, transformed by wild bliss as her eyes found Shadow Jack. He looked away from her, back at the old man. “Wadie Abdhiamal, representin’ the Demarchy. And usually better than this. I’m afraid two hundred kilosecs in that deathtrap didn’t do much for my appearance.” The old man laughed.

Shadow Jack glanced back at him. “Try it for a couple megasecs, sometime.”

The captain drifted against the control panel, lines of strain settling on her face again, making it grim. “It was hell, Pappy. I didn’t want to make you come into Demarchy space to pick us up, but I don’t know how much longer the life-support system would have held up. It wasn’t adequate for two—and with three…” She rubbed her face, smearing grime. “The past two days were worse than the whole two weeks going in. But we had to bring him along. It was the only way we could get out of there. Their communications network is incredible; they already knew everything about us—everyone did, on every single separate piece of rock. And every one of them just waiting to grab our ship and play God with it—just like the Ringers. We can’t trust either of them now; if we want hydrogen we’re going to have to take it.”

“Captain Torgussen,” Wadie said, “the government only wants—”

“I know what you want, Abdhiamal. My ship. You made it clear enough. But your Demarchy will have to catch us first.” Her eyes cut him, blue glass. “I’m sorry, Abdhiamal, but you’re on our ground now. Consider yourself our hostage.”

Shadow Jack laughed, sitting back in the air. The girl moved away from the panel to his side, her face expressionless.

Wadie said nothing, saw the captain hesitate.

“You don’t seem very surprised. You didn’t believe what I told you at Mecca, and still you let this happen?”

“I didn’t know whether to believe you or not. After what you’ve been through, I figured maybe you really had given orders for the destruction of your ship, and I didn’t want to take that chance. And I didn’t want to take any chances with the Tirikis. And if you were lying about cooperating… well, I’m on your ship; that give me another chance to change your mind. Heaven Belt needs your help.”

“We don’t owe you anything; greed and hostility are all we’ve met in Heaven Belt.”

“Why did you come here in the first place, except to trade on the fact that you figured we were ridin’ high? Why shouldn’t we be as greedy? One hundred million people—most of the Main Belt—died in the first hundred megasecs after the war. And the ones that are left…” He pointed at Shadow Jack and the girl. “Look at Lansing. Their people won’t last another circuit around Heaven. And we’re all headed for the same thing, unless we have your ship.”

She frowned, hooked a shoe under the security rail that edged the panel. “The fact remains that we have rights of our own, as human beings—including the right to leave this system if we choose—and you’re not willing to give them to us. It’s true we came here to trade, because we thought Heaven had things we wanted. But you’ve got nothing to offer, and we can’t afford to waste our ship and the rest of our lives for nothing. Morningside can’t afford it. We just don’t have the resources to throw away on you.”

“I—admit we didn’t consider your position—” He broke off, the crassness of it embarrassing him. “We made a mistake, not considerin’ your position. It was a stupid mistake. But we aren’t the Ringers; we don’t just want your ship, we want your cooperation. We might still have some things you’d want. It wouldn’t have to be forever. The use of your ship, its reactor, and its shop, for a hundred and fifty megasecs. We’ll deal with you fairly.” The part of him that had questioned MacWong asked, Will we?

The Belter kids stared at him, distrustful, more in sympathy with outsiders than with a man from their own system.

The captain moved restlessly. “I don’t believe that. Everything I’ve seen shows me I can’t depend on the Demarchy. You can’t even depend on each other. Even if you meant every word you said, someone else would make it a lie and attack us… I’m not blind, Abdhiamal, I can see what’s happened here, and I know if s true that you need help. If I’d only had some sign to prove to me that at least the Demarchy was worthy of our trust. But I haven’t. We can’t help you; you won’t let us. It’s impossible.”

“Captain, I—”

“The matter is closed.” Something in her voice told him that it was closed, irrevocably, and that the reason went much deeper than a simple betrayal of trust.

Not understanding, he only nodded, his own fatigue and exasperation leaving him defeated. “To what end am I your hostage then, Captain?”

Her eyes shifted, clouding. “I don’t know. Whatever end we come to, for better or worse… will be yours too, I suppose. You helped us out of a tight spot, Abdhiamal. Inadvertently, but you did help us. I’ll try to be as fair to you. If we get the hydrogen we need, I’ll find a way to get you back to the Demarchy before we leave the system. It will only be a—temporary inconvenience.” She looked at him strangely for a moment; turning away, she reached for the old man’s arm. “Oh, Christ, Pappy, I’m so tired. So glad to be back.” He pulled her close, too close; held her until she broke away, kissing him once, tenderly.

Old enough to be her father… surprise let a grimace of distaste pull his own mouth down; he covered it as they looked back at him. Only four, in this large, empty room; and two of them were Belters. Too empty. “Where’s the rest of your crew?”

The old man glanced at the captain; she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter; he’ll find it out soon enough, I suppose.” Her hand gestured at the screen and knotted into a fist. “They all died at Discus. And we’re going back. Pappy, get started on a course for Discus. We can’t risk staying here any longer. We’re going to take what we need from the Ringers, Abdhiamal, any way we can, and that’s going to suit me fine.” She threw it at him, defiant, before she turned to Shadow Jack and the girl. “I’m going to get us out of here as fast as I can. I want to be sure no one from the Demarchy can touch us. We’ll be doing one gee for five or six days, again, to get us back to the Rings.”

“It’ll be worth it.” Shadow Jack cracked his knuckles. The girl’s mouth set in a line; she nodded. She moved closer to Shadow Jack, stroking his bare arm lightly. He glanced down at her hand, irritated, but didn’t pull away.

“Thirsty?” she said. He straightened out of his drifting slouch, smiled suddenly, wiping his hand across his mouth. “Yeah!” He pushed off from the wall and they left the room.

The old man was strapped into a seat, working at the panel. The captain moved out into the air to collect a pencil and an unidentifiable metal cube. She pushed the cat into a compartment in the wall.

“Captain—”

She started back toward the control board. “What?”

“I’d like permission to use your radio.”

“Refused.” She reached a chair, maneuvered herself down.

“But I need to—”

“Refused.” She turned her back, cutting him off as she began her work at the board. He waited, studying the tasteless combination of pale-blue walls and green carpet He noticed a stripe of deeper blue on the wall, an arrow, and the word down.

“The Lansing ship is secure. Are the co-ords in, Pappy?”

“They’re in. Ready when you are.”

“Right. Ignition… thirty seconds. Feet on the ground, all of you!” The last of it went over an intercom, rattling off of walls through the empty heart of the ship. Wadie watched her hands move through a sequence on the panel, felt the light, familiar hand of gravity settle on his shoulders. And begin to bear down: His feet touched the floor, the drag against his legs continued, increasing past the point of familiarity, past the point of comfort. He backed up, caught hold of a bar along the wall, remembering thirty seconds of one gee on a Ringer ship, and realizing what it would be like for the next five hundred thousand seconds. Pain wrenched his muscles; the blue-on-blue streaked wall filled his vision down… His hands tightened, and he stood, enduring the pain, ignoring the heart that beat against his ribs like a fist.

He stood—and moved tentatively away from the wall, as the pressure bearing down on him stabilized. Dizziness made him sway, but he controlled it, balanced precariously as the captain and the old man rose from their seats. They looked toward him with expectant pity; the cat struggled out of the wall through a plastic porthole, made a circuit of his legs, licked his booted foot consolingly with her tongue. He folded his arms; looked down, and back at them across the room. He smiled, blandly.

The captain turned and walked out of the room. The cat bounded after her, tail flying like a banner.

“Abdhiamal, is it?” The old man came over to him, held out a hand. “My name’s Welkin, navigator on the Ranger.”

Wadie nodded, shook his hand, wondered at his motive in offering it. He noticed that Welkin’s hand was bright with golden rings, like Betha Torgussen’s; and that his grip was strong and firm… But the old man must be tough, if he could take one gee—ten meters per second squared, the gravity of Old Earth. This was what it had been like to live on Earth. A crash and Shadow Jack’s pained “Hell!” rose from somewhere below them. No wonder we called this system Heaven.